Noise
by Ygrayne
Summary: Very early scenes in the film King Arthur, told from Tristan's perspective. Practically zero plot since the scenes come before the actual conflict, just exploring - or trying to explore - his mindset. One-shot.


_**No copyright infringement intended. Italics denote thoughts, as always; if you see a sentence in the present tense, it's just a statement by the author.**_

'Galahad, do you not still know the Romans? They can't scratch their arses without holding a ceremony.'

Laughter, men's voices; the clip-clop of horses' hooves on the road. The knights' conversation grated on his ears and then slipped off, unnoticed – he had grown used to them after so many years. Tristan stroked his horse's neck. _Only a little while_, he promised, _and then you shall have good hay and a long, long rest._

'You are kinder to horses than you are to us,' Lancelot commented acidly.

Tristan looked at him, rather puzzled, and turned back to the horse. Lancelot made a contemptuous gesture and rode to catch up with the others.

They were as strange to him as he was to them. Social skills. He could not comprehend their incessant need to talk for no reason. The past fifteen years had taught him to behave more like other people, so that strangers often thought he was like themselves when they saw him for the first time. But it was so hard, so hard, to keep up the pretense, and he did not like talking and he never would.

'I don't kill for pleasure,' protested Galahad up ahead, 'unlike some.' He grinned at Tristan.

Galahad, young and naïve, foolishly trying to be kind. Attempting to include Tristan in the conversation lest he feel left out. The others had given it up years ago. Now they watched him, a little fearful that Tristan, wildly erratic as he was, might turn on the younger knight. But he only replied, 'You should try it someday. You might get a taste for it.' His voice was hoarse from long disuse.

Clearly relieved, they resumed talking. He dropped back, unobtrusively, and whistled to his hawk. She landed gracefully, cooing, and felt the familiar finger stroking her head. Her beak, cruelly and beautifully curved, opened and let forth a soft clacking sound. Open, breathing, tasting his scent, her feathers soft and dark beneath his touch.

Tristan rode always at the back of the line. Sometimes the others would look back at him, watchful and half-frightened, saying without words: _You are a freak, you're insane, and we're not having you near us._ He did not mind. Birds do not think such thoughts.

The others did not like him; they did not _dis_like him, perhaps, but they feared him and avoided him when they could. Because Tristan did not talk, and because of the way he killed people, slow and torturous, enjoying it. It was very strange. He didn't make a bloody mess when he killed, did he? It was very tidy, and rather pleasant to behold. Delicately, with just the tips of his fingers, he touched the sword at his side.

Soon. Very soon.

There was other reasons that Tristan was the one chosen to be scout. Special reasons, though no one actually said them aloud. Scouts ride ahead, so that the knights need not associate with them. And, because they venture alone into enemy territory, the scouts usually get killed first. They chose Tristan for all these reasons.

Sometimes, the only really demented people are the ones everyone thinks are sane.

* * *

The hawk was not happy. She did not like taverns; all the ugly sounds and bad odours bombarding her delicate head. She, like her human, was a creature of the silent, open plains, far away from people. She could not understand why he came here at all.

Her golden eyes flickered back and forth, surveying the drunken humans with distaste. How noisy they were, how graceless! She hated the unpleasant smells, fire-smoke and human sweat and the scent of the strange bitter liquid in the humans' mugs. It was all she could do not to flutter up to the rafters and simply fly out of the window.

But _her_ human was here, eyeing with interest the contents of his mug and occasionally taking a sip, and watching the antics of his comrades as he might watch small, rather foolish children at their play. She would stay with him. She bent down, her talons strangely gentle on his arm, and softly pecked at his fingers.

He sat in the corner, very quiet, still halfway through his first mug of beer while the other knights were drinking lustily. Bors, perhaps, was on his tenth or eleventh mug. Their speech drifted back to him, the words slurred with drinking.

'When are you going to leave Bors and come home with me?'

'…damn Woads…'

'I tell ya, t'crazy bitch wants to _give them names_!' A slap from Vanora.

Lancelot, with two girls on his lap and a third massaging his shoulders. Beer forcing a friendliness towards Tristan that was completely absent when he was sober. 'Tristan! Come an' sit with a girl for a change,' he called, less drunk than the others, but his words still blurred and blending together. '…No? Antisocial little bastard…'

A mouse ran over Tristan's foot. He reached down and, striking as swiftly as the hawk herself, caught and held it between the pincer-like fingers of his left hand. He put the hawk on the table and dropped the mouse at her feet.

The hawk was hungry. Her beak darted down, striking again and again at the fleeing mouse, lightning-quick but missing every time; her talons scrabbled against the hard wooden boards. Here in the tavern, among too many tables, too many inconvenient people, she was noisy and awkward. If she could have cursed aloud, she would have.

Half of Tristan watched her, enjoying her silent hunting (for even in her difficulty she made little noise) and the loveliness of her long feathers. And the other half of him was looking at the others, very irritated, and hoping very much that it would be over soon. He could not simply stay outside the whole time; the other knights would mock him, berate him and generally make a great deal of noise and Tristan did not like noise.

They did not understand how hard it was to sit in the tavern, crowded with people, and always keeping himself under control so that no one might guess his thoughts. They never would understand.

Boisterous laughter and coarse jokes. Talking, brawling, flirting, drinking. _Why do people talk so much more when they're drunk? _The tavern was too confined, too many people in it. It was unbearable – every time, after days and weeks of scouting alone, nerves strained to the breaking point, to come back abruptly to the noise of human society. And he did not like noise. He sat and sat, not saying anything, his eyes, eagle-like and inscrutable, sweeping over the others. The barmaids shied away from him.

Waiting for all this to be over. (_Keep your face impassive, don't say anything, don't dare, nobody must know what you are thinking._) He had put his sword away in the meeting hall with the Bishop, but his knife hung sharp and glinting at his belt. He had only to pick it up and throw it, and there would be one less noisy annoying person in the tavern, and no one would ever know _why_…

No.

Wait.

The terrified mouse scampered off the table and dropped onto the floor. The hawk, forgetting where she was, spread her wings and swooped down, scattering mugs and plates.

'I _told_you not to bring that bird in here!' Vanora yelled.

Tristan said nothing. His hawk had caught the mouse and eaten it, and so he was happy.

Lancelot, very drunk by now, tottered towards the back of the tavern, one of the barmaids held tight in one perspiring arm. He gestured to her as if she was an object, to be passed around like a ball till everyone wearied of her.

'D'you want her when I'm done?'

The response came back, crisp and untainted by drunkenness, and the hawk sat cold and graceful at his side. 'I'm not taking your leavings.'

Laughter, and the coarse vulgarity of the exchange is taken in and savoured by Lancelot, and the knife is very sharp and how nice the red blood will look on the gleaming blade…

Wait.

_Wait._

Tristan got up and abruptly left the tavern. The door swung shut and closed out the noise, a good solid barrier between him and the irritating talking people. The hawk perched on his arm, her soft-feathered wings gently fluttering, feeling the freedom of the open air and the quietness. Sometimes, riding alone in the forests, the hawk flying close beside him, both of them were happy; truly happy, despite the constant tension and the watching for enemies who might suddenly leap out and attack. Happy, in the silence and the loneliness, and afterwards it was horrible to walk again among people and hear their drunken laughter. And Tristan knew the hawk felt it as keenly as he himself. She, too, did not like too many people around. There was too much noise when there were people around.

Tristan did not like noise.

And now he could put the knife underneath his tunic (so that he would not have to look at it) and he could touch it without fear, because the people were behind him and so he would not be tempted. And soon there would be a battle. He had known it from the instant the Bishop called Arthur back in the meeting hall. People always have bad news for you when they wish to speak to you in private.

A mission. There would be fighting in it, and of course the other knights would be angry at Arthur but it did not matter. Perhaps it would be the Woads. Or the Saxons. That was the good thing about battle – it was easier to endure people all around you when they were killing each other. And in the battle maybe he would kill them by cutting out their bowels, or beheading them, or thrusting the sword into their mouths so that it cut them open from the inside.

There were so many ways to kill people, and yet none to bring them back to life.

Tristan drew in his breath. The hawk waited, patiently, and when his eyes regained their focus she made the clacking noise again and he stroked her head. It was good to go out for a while. It was so quiet and peaceful and perhaps he was not so abnormal after all, after this little rest from other people. Maybe, soon, he would even go back into the tavern and join Gawain and Galahad in throwing knives at a board.

But his hawk did not like people, even after a rest like this. He felt her discomfort when he turned back to the door, and she was looking at him mutely, and he remembered that though he could never be completely free of other people, she could.

Above them stretched the great sky, boundless. The hawk did not fly, but her head twitched and she gazed upwards with – was it longing? No; tenderly, almost affectionately, she caressed him with a wingtip. She was faithful, she would never try to leave. But he knew that she, too, missed the silence of the unpeopled wild.

Tristan raised his arm and jerked it, pushing the hawk upwards. The hawk started. Confused, she looked back at him.

'You can go,' said Tristan, 'if you like.'

The hawk fluttered uncertainly into the air, then soared upwards and circled, slowly. Her body looked clumsy and fat when she was on the ground among humans; but in the sky, alone, free, she was cruelly graceful. A wild thing, flying higher and higher, free of humans as her own could never be.

She looked at the great blue cloudless sky, her eyes bright and piercing in her dark face. She envisioned the wide plains and the wilderness, out there somewhere, waiting for her. And then she looked back at Tristan.

The hawk plunged downwards and perched on his arm. Fiercely she nuzzled his neck, embracing him and the noisy, personal, unpleasant human world in which he lived. And they both knew that she would never leave as long as he was alive.

'Stupid bird,' said Tristan.


End file.
